LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 367, 16 August 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THE ATHELSTONS OF MOLTE d’ ATHELSTON. {From the Dublin University Muynzinc.) [Conti mud..) She certainly seemed changed of late ; the once elastic step had grown slower ami more subdued, and the gay, musical laugh, which had often grated so offensively upon the high bred ears of the Lady ilowena, sounded far less frequently now, till even the placu mother, albeit rendered slightly dull m her perceptions by the overpowering responsibility of seven daughters, pondered sadly m her own mind and decided that home and home duties were the best for girls; for certainly Sybil had never been the same since her trip to London and her visit to Morte d’Athelston. , Sybil had, of course, heard of the mysterious disappearance of Modred Athelston, and a dead heart -sickness had seemed to crush out her very life. , . And then, later, she had heard of las equally strange reappearance, and in spite of herself a heavy weight seemed lilted oil her soul. It was nothing that she told herself that he was her cousin’s betrothed husband —nothing, less than nothing, to her. At first, the very fact that ho was alive would bring a quickening to the pulse, and a wild joy to her heart, which she vainly strove against. But now the reaction had set in, and the bitter truth seemed, if possible, to rise before her more bitterly tluvn ever, And Sybil, the unsentimental, seemingly lighthearted girl, carried a ‘ dead heart’ within. ‘ Sybil! Sybil! where are you ? I have been searching the whole place for you till I am tired.’ . * For me ?’ said Sybil, with a start. < Yes, for you,’ cried a great girl of about fourteen years of age, gasping and panting from the rapidity with which she had rushed up to her sister. Sybil, assuming immediately her position as mentor and instructor of youth, said, ‘ Gently, gently, Agnes. You are really too wild and hoydenish for such a great girl. You must be a little quieter, and more ladylike.’ . Agnes, who was systematically antagonistic to sisterly authority, said ‘Bother ! 1 tell you that you are wanting, bo look sharp. Stir your stumps ! Trot! ‘ Who wants me ?’ asked Sybil, resignedly. Agnes was becoming too much for her in her present listless mood, ‘ A young man, decidedly not from the country, judging by his gat-up. liottenKow—man about town —that style of thing, you know,” responded the incorrigible Miss Agnes. Sybil put her hand quickly to her heart as if to still its rapid beating, and tried to argue herself into a state of common sense. Nevertheless, she hardly heard her sister’s parting admonition, “To look her best, for he was a howling swell,” as she ran quickly upstairs to her own room, and, plunging her face into cold water, tried to calm her agitated nerves. She pulled down the black spotted veil, more generally worn on her hat for ornament than use, and touching herself up a little before her looking-glass, proceeded demurely to the drawing-room, .She had known as well as if she had seen him who was there. She could not tell how, or why, that certain knowledge came to her, only she felt that it was so ; notwithstanding which, she entered the room as calmly and placidly, and did her little start of surprise at seeing him, as naturally as if Lord Athelston was the last person in the world whom she had expected to meet. .She might have dispensed with the spotted veil, so transient was the faint flush that for a moment ting d her cheek. She was a woman, and the natural instincts of her sex told her thus much ? and she could be composed and selfpossessed though the iron was entering into her soul, thereby slightly disconcerting “the man about town ! the howling swell!” who utterly collapsed under the suny froid of this country girl, more especially as he left that he himself was not appearing to advantage —he, a veteran, who, for sixteen years ox’ thereabouts, had been subject to every species of artillery that female invention could bring to bear upon the heir apparent of the house of Athelston, being decidedly put out, awkward, and more or less incoherent, spell-bound in the presence of this north country maiden. Lady Eleanor, weeping qixietly on the sofa, drying her eyes with soft white cambric, saw none of these things. Her thoughts were only of the brother, the account of whose last moments she had just been hearing from her unexpected visitor. The brother who had once been her almost father, whose dead wife she so truly loved, from whom she had been so cruelly banished well nigh five-and-twenty years ago, never to meet again. True, she and her brother had been so far reconciled as to write to each other before his death, but they had not met. This fair, fat, indolent woman, who had never been half a dozen times from home in the course of her married life, and to whom a journey to London of late years appeared a greater undertaking than a cruise to Iceland or a trip to the Jffyramids to a modern young lady, had put off the visit to Morte d’Athelston, so urgently pressed upon her by her brother ; and now her warm heart reproached her as she thought of him dying all alone, without his daughter’s hand in his, or one loving woman’s voice to whisper words of faith and hope as he crossed the dark stream, and entered the valley of the shadow of death.

‘ How did you leave Rowcna ?’ inquired Miss Charnleigh, with a proper amount of smpathy in her voice for the girl this man was going to marry; and then it suddenly occurred to her that he might have come—perhaps at Ilowena’s own request, sorrow might have softened her haughty cousin’s heart, and made her yearn for love and .sympathy—to ask her to act a sister’s part by her, and stay with her till her marriage, or, mayhap, even to be her friend and bridesmaid on that occasion ; and she would do it. She was prepared affectionately to forget the coldness of the past, and truly, at any inward sacrifice, to befriend her cousin in her loneliness and desolation ; so that tins heroic damsel was rather disconcerted when Lord Athelston, stammering and stuttering, answered, rather incoherently,— ‘ Uowena is quite well, or, that is, she is very ill. I believe she is much better, but 1 have not seen her since her father’s death, or, I should rather say, since I came to life.’ * Hot seen her ?’ and Sybil’s great eyes exastonishment. ♦ Oh, perhaps

And all her woman’s sympathy was aroused in one moment for the suffering girl, notwithstanding that she had won the prize in the race of life.

‘ No, really, I can’t say that; the fact is, I don’t believe she knows that lam alive. To tell the truth, it was about that very thing I came to speak to Lady Eleanor.’ And Lord Athelston stopped abruptly. Now that he was there, what was he to say? How could lie tell these unsophisticated country people that their relation was to all intents and purposes a murderess ? No, he could not possibly do that. Then how explain that he meant to jilt hex’, and thereby bring the virtuous indignation of her aunt and cousins on his devoted head. He began to find his situation embarrassing, and curious phenomenon, this little country girl, whom he had pictured to his imagination, as so utterly overcome at sight of him, and to whom he meant to be kind and patronizing till he made her feel quite at her case, had just turned the tables on him, and in a well-bred, ladylike way, was talking him out of his too evident confusion. His lordship was floored, and if did inwardly mutter ‘ that girls were the very devil,’ he was really to be excused, under such very humiliating circumstances.

Sybil was certainly very puzzled at Lord Athclston’s apparently utter ignorance about his betrothed. There certainly was something wrong. Nevertheless, conversation being a duty which, under existing circumstances, devolved itself upon her, she started on a different tack, referring to Lord Athelston’s long journey, the primitive hotel the village afforded, and other indifferent topics, avoiding all reference to subjects which she saw were embarrassing to their guest, till the fashionable man of the world found himself gradually regaining his lost composure under the judicious treatment of this naturally well-bred country girl.

(To be continued.)